ECOT again fighting order to repay millions for unverified enrollment

Tuesday

Dec 5, 2017 at 9:10 AM

By Catherine Candisky The Columbus Dispatch

The state has unveiled more tricks of the trade used by ECOT in an attempt to obtain more taxpayer money than the state says the big online charter school deserved.
For example, education department legal counsel Douglas Cole told a hearing officer Monday, one student was reported as participating in more than 9,000 hours of learning, "which is quite a feat considering there is 8,760 hours in a year if you multiply 365 times 24."
The Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow also counted some students who reported completing more than the required 920 hours of annual "learning activities" as more than a full-time student, and asked for more funding. It's impossible for one student to be considered more than one person, Cole said.
In addition, a few individual students were supposedly logged on to their computers for large blocks of time — one, for example, for 300 consecutive hours and another from Christmas Eve through New Year's — raising questions about whether ECOT's computer tracking system simply counts student participation anytime a computer was left on, regardless of how long.
The findings turned up in attendance reports provided by ECOT that had "huge data errors," Cole said.
For the second year, the ECOT is fighting an order to repay millions in state aid for unverified student enrollment.
Attorneys for Ohio's largest online school blasted the state Department of Education for mishandling its latest review of ECOT's student enrollment, telling a hearing officer on Monday that the school was entitled to all the $104 million in state aid it received for the 2016-17 school year.
"The department repeatedly changed its mind as to what it wanted, what it expected from ECOT. That it never really stated a standard other than (computer log-in) durations, there was no specific guidance on what was expected or how ECOT would comply," Christopher J. Hogan, an attorney for ECOT argued during an administrative appeal hearing at the Ohio Department of Education.
In September, the education department found ECOT owes $19.2 million for the 2016-2017 school year.
According to the department's attendance review, ECOT verified 11,575 students, 18.5 percent fewer than the 14,203 students the school reported. The state used student log-in durations and documented non-computer time to determine whether students are meeting the state-required minimum of 920 hours of learning opportunities.
The education department asked ECOT to provide "for every student who had been enrolled in ECOT for any portion of the year, ODE wanted to know what the enrollment period was for that student ... and how many hours ... the student actually participated," Cole told hearing officer Karl Schedler.
"ECOT never did this," Cole said.
Hogan said ECOT repeatedly complied with department requests for additional data, often at great time and expense. The process was confusing, in part, because the department gave no guidance to ECOT until May of 2017, despite its own rule requiring agency officials to meet with online schools at the beginning of the school year.
Cole said ECOT cancelled two earlier scheduled meetings.
The attendance findings were an improvement for ECOT over the prior year, when it was unable to substantiate about 60 percent of its enrollment, verifying 6,313 full-time students, not the 15,322 for whom it was paid.
To recoup the money for the 2015-16 school year, the state is deducting $2.5 million from ECOT's monthly state-funding payments until the $60 million is repaid. ECOT appealed the findings to the Ohio Supreme Court after losing an administrative appeal and subsequent challenges in Franklin County Common Pleas Court and Franklin County Court of Appeals.
The Department of Education already is deducting a portion of ECOT’s state funding for the current school year. In August, state Superintendent Paolo DeMaria said the state would start withholding an additional 12 percent from ECOT’s monthly payments, based on ongoing concerns that the school would again be overpaid if it was funded based on the students reported from the 2016-17 school year.
ccandisky@dispatch.com
@ccandisky